Swedish court declares Pirate Bay judge unbiased

Stockholm District Court Judge Tomas Norström, whose impartiality was called into question after his guilty judgment in the Pirate Bay trial, has been found bias-free by Swedish courts.

Judge Norström is a member of two Swedish copyright reform groups, the SFU and the SFIR, which include some highly outspoken members of the Anti-Piracy Bureau and IFPI. It was thought Norström's link to these individuals could be grounds for a bias against the Pirate Bay.

The Swedish Court of Appeals investigated the case and assigned judges fully unrelated to copyright affairs to preside.

A statement from the Court today to the Swedish newspaper SvD said: "We believe that [Norström's] membership to these copyright groups does not mean that there is any reason to doubt his impartiality when it comes to judging this case."

The court recognized that Norström should have stated his affiliations before the trial started to streamline the legal process, but it determined that it was not grounds for retrial.

Rick Falk Vinge, head of the Swedish Pirate Party which recently scored a seat in the EU Parliament, has been ramping up the rhetoric recently, and said today's judgment is "a total failure of our legal system's credibility...because it sends a clear signal to all under the age of 40 that the judiciary is the absolute enemy, no matter how fair they claim to be."

"I honestly do not know how to begin to tackle this politically," Falk Vinge continues, "The judicial system has totally collapsed in this case, in my eyes."